Secure MQ coder: An efficient way to protect JPEG 2000 images in wireless multimedia sensor networks

•We propose an efficient encryption algorithm for protecting JPEG 2000 images.•Our algorithm is quite fast and energy-saving when handling massive data in WMSNs.•We solve the vulnerability to chosen-plaintext attack in a novel and effective way.•The proposed algorithm and its superiorities are most related existing schemes.

This paper presents a secure MQ coder (SMQ) for efficient selective encryption of JPEG 2000 images. Being different from existing schemes where encryption overhead is proportional to the size of plain image, SMQ only selectively encrypts tiny and constant volume of data in JPEG 2000 coding regardless of image size. It is extremely fast and suitable for protecting JPEG 2000 images in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs). Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that SMQ can achieve a balance between security and efficiency, while keeping comparable compression performance and energy consumption with standard JPEG 2000 coding.